D.C.'s poor need a raise

By
Martin Austermuhle

How many District residents are considered poor? Enough to fill both RFK Stadium and Nationals Park, and still have folks leftover. How many Washingtonians are living in extreme poverty, making less than $5,300 per year for a single person? About 47,000 residents, or 9 percent of the city's population. And what would it take to lift the District's low-income residents out of poverty? A full-time job paying between $12 to $15 an hour.

These are some of the takeaways from an interesting report published today by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute assessing the state of the District's poor and what it would take to raise their standards of living.

The report, titled "Who Is Low-Income in D.C.?," finds that poverty in the District grew throughout the 2000s, despite strong economic growth in the city during that time. By 2006-07, over 133,000 residents -- fully one-quarter of the city's population -- were making less than $25,000 for a family of three, or roughly 150 percent of the federal poverty line. Needless to say, the recession hasn't helped matters at all, as another recent DCFPI report found.